This 5-Hour Rule Is Used By the World's Most Successful People

As a society, we are obsessed with the idea of maximizing our productivity. From countless articles and reports about managing sleep cycles to optimize success and productivity hacks that allow us to operate like some sentient robot, we clearly value getting as much done as efficiently as possible. A new school of thought, however, is putting short-term productivity aside, instead relying on the consistent cultivation of long-term knowledge.

Enter the five-hour learning rule.

Simply put, the ideology behind this is that if you’re not spending five hours a week learning, then you’re not only falling behind, you’re actually being irresponsible. Often times we let productivity get in the way of learning, we’re so focused on the immediate tasks at hand that we can’t take a step back and look beyond. The five-hour rule subverts this argument with the idea that any immediate productivity sacrificed by reading a book or taking a class is eventually made up for tenfold in the future. Especially in an economy that’s inching closer towards rewarding knowledge above all.

It’s an objective truth that learning is the single best investment one can make. It isn’t subject to random market fluctuations or a turbulent economy. But this isn’t just some feel good, intellectual ethos. There are serious economic ramifications coming, impacts that certainly will almost certainly place a higher value on knowledge in comparison to money in the future. While ‘working hard’ was the battle cry of a time gone by, it’s ‘learning hard’ that should be the ideal we all abide by in the future.

So how exactly can one survive in what’s been dubbed the new ‘knowledge economy’? Let’s find out.